Anthony is an original thinker, a fine scholar and an obvious star of the future. I was really shocked, therefore, to hear that Lincoln Christian University recently terminated his employment, apparently because of some perceived problem with his recent book on the Historical Jesus. It makes no sense to me that an institution that uses the name of "university" would do something so stupid and so damaging to its reputation. Nothing good can come of this. I offered my sympathies to Anthony privately when I first heard about this several weeks ago, but now that it is public information, I wish to make a public statement of how disgusted I am by this folly.

I mentioned to Anthony and to Chris Keith that in the light of this action, I would not be willing to participate in the planned conference on Jesus, Criteria and the Demise of Authenticity, scheduled for October, if it were to take place at Lincoln Christian University. I am pleased to hear that there are now plans to host the conference elsewhere, and I do hope that those plans will come to fruition.

Mike, the book was a popular-level look into historical Jesus studies from the perspective of memory theory. He pointed out how flawed memory is (which an overly conservative constituency might perceive as a threat to their understanding of historicity as it relates to the material in the gospels). Again, as you said....not very radical.

This is not as surprising as it seems. The history of Christianity is littered with instances of exclusion and excomunication even in university circles. Its alleged universality strictly applies to the rhetorical realm. In practice Christians have generally behaved as a haughty click, and increasingly so after the Reformation, giving birth to the myriad denominations we now see.

There's no reason for scandal, this is their genuine tradition which overrides any other consideration -scholarly or whatever.

One mustn't forget, for instance, that non-conformists where excluded from Oxford and Cambridge up to the 1870's.